West Bank Labor Laws

by Editor
February 11, 2014 at 10:25 am

https://www.smartertimes.com/1131/west-bank-labor-laws

A front-page New York Times article about Palestinian Arabs who work for Israeli companies with factories in the West Bank reports, "But those jeeps also help pay his $1,471 monthly salary at Zarfati, more than triple the minimum wage in Palestinian areas of the West Bank, where a 19 percent unemployment rate and lack of labor laws make finding a decent job difficult."

The Times argues that the "lack of labor laws" makes "finding a decent job difficult." Whoever edited that sentence must not have been thinking of Richard Epstein's work on the way that it is labor laws themselves that make finding a decent job difficult. There's also a bit of tautology there — is it the "19 percent unemployment rate" that makes "finding a decent job difficult" or is the 19 percent unemployment rate just a way of describing, statistically, that finding a decent job is difficult? Either way, that sentence could have benefited from some editing.

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